Microchip that tells the GP if you've taken your pills

Microchip that tells the GP if you've taken your pills

www.dailymail.co.uk

Microchips in pills could soon allow doctors to find out whether a patient has taken their medication.

The digestible sensors, just 1mm wide, would mean GPs and surgeons could monitor patients outside the hospital or surgery.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Well, in case you haven't noticed, this is, as far as I can tell, still UK only.

Read the article. The scariest thing mentioned in there is that the microchips are invisible to the patients and can be added to any pill during its creation process. Potential invasion of privacy, anyone?

Personally, I'm not sure about this. Yes, they raise good points about how these microchips could be used, but the whole thing just feels like a step in the wrong direction as far as the trend of 'microchipping' is concerned.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this.


www.dailymail.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

You see, Great Britain doesn't care about your rights. They're a lab for all of the rest of the world. They're a nanny state and the state likes to implement things that a nanny state would do. Now, I think there's a problem there. Don't you? It's just for surveillance.

reply to post by Romantic Rights


Oh, for gracious sakes! Maybe things are different in the UK, but I have worked for Dr.'s in the US, who could probably give a crap if a patient takes their meds or not.

It could be just another way to add on to the price tag of meds, which are already expensive enough as it is. What if a patient can't afford them?

I have seen Dr.'s order thousands of dollars worth of tests.......and they never even look at the reports when they come back! How in the world does anyone think they would actually use this information?

Also, having to take a med is bad enough alone, without this added little treasure.

This line from Jurassic Park sprang to mind when I read this:

Ian Malcolm:
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not
they could that they didn't stop to think if they
should. Science can create pesticides, but it can't
tell us not to use them. Science can make a nuclear
reactor, but it can't tell us not to build it!"

Scientists might think twice if they were held accountable for the horrors they bring into the world. I always thought that we might ought to have preemptively tried those that built the nuclear bombs for crimes against humanity.

The only reason for govt. to do something like this, is not to make sure they are taking their medicine to keep them well, but to take medicine to make sure they are taking something particular, that might not be very good for them.

Talk about big brother!! Plus as mentioned, Drs don't give a care if people really take care of themselves or not and take their medicines.

Seems handy for the mentally-disturbed or those suffering from psychological disorders as some can be very resistant to any form of treatment but it the potential for misuse of this technology is rife as usual.

If this RFID chip can the tell the doctor what you've digested, imagine what other biological data they can give to 3rd parties like pharmaceutical companies and so on, who are dying to know market statistics like this.

This charge is picked up by a sensing patch on the patients’ stomach or back, which records the time and date that the pill is digested.

Ok, first off - it's not like this is going to just be added to pills wholesale and allow monitoring of you. For the system to work, you need to wear a small monitoring device. A device you can remove, and which is not mandatory. If you don't want to wear it, nobody can force you. It's not like you can just pick up a bottle of vitamins at the market, unknowingly ingest a chip, and have the government track your every move. These things do not broadcast a signal.

This device can be extremely useful as well, even if they do start chipping over the counter medicine. Some people have a tendency to self-medicate, over or under medicate. Mixing over-the-counter drugs in improper doses with prescription medication in improper doses can have disastrous side effects in terms of complications or reactions. It would allow patients to be informed of potentially hazardous drug combinations by checking a database and sending a warning message back via E-Mail, Automated phone, or text message.

This is a potent, and very optional, life saving medical advancement - and all some of you see is tyranny and oppression?

*sigh*

It's not even going to really matter in a decade or so. We're a few years off from being able to sequence the human genome in under an hour and for less than 5,000. This means "big pharma", is going to have to radically restructure or go out of business as designer medications overtake conventional medications.

reply to post by Lasheic


You are correct that this could be very beneficial for certain patients. My concern is not so much the technology of the chip itself but that fact that it requires the availability of a web enabled mobile phone which some patients may either not have, may not know how to use perhaps if elderly, or particularly if suffering from dementia may forget to recharge/turn on.

The idea is good, but the comms methodology is bad.

Now, being a conspiracy site the obvious reaction is that this is a conspiracy to track people. Consider this then: As the technology gets better a microchip 'nano robot' could be created that is ingested in the pill and on being activated by the stomach acids, tunnels into the wall of the stomach and by attracting further nano robots from the pills builds a system that transmits information that can be picked up by the myriad CCTV systems that abound in the UK. This could be applied to any pill, and the ingestion of multiple 'nano robots' would not cause a problem as the multiple robots would strengthen the signals to enhance detection. Together with facial recognition systems the signals could eventually be linked to the face, and thence to personal details, DNA etc.

Yes, in principle it is good and appears not to have a hidden agenda, but it just as easily could - no patch required!

I'm getting dermatitis just thinking about this. If this ends up being used to force people to take medication I think there would be ways to induce some kind of localized rash and suggest that you are allergic to something in the microchip. Of course it's difficult to determine the cause of a rash and most GPs I've encountered aren't very interested in rashes unless they're persistent.

This one really has the potential for a lot of abuse.

reply to post by PuterMan


Yeah, but that same train of thought could be applied to anything... and often is! Look at some of the uproar over digital converter boxes supposedly housing cameras or brain-washing pattern interference modulators or whatever. How many people have actually taken apart their digital converter boxes and examined it's contents? How many people who do so actually know exactly what it is they're doing and what they're looking at? If those devices really are in there, then the proof is in your living room - yet... nobody can seem to come forward with demonstrable evidence.

Technology is inert. It can be used for either benevolent or malicious purposes. This has been true ever since the discovery that fire could both cook your food - as well as your enemies flesh. But as of right now - the technology is beneficial. It does no good to anyone to jump at shadows, and it's even worse to jump at speculations of where someone thinks shadows may one day be.

Conspiracies DO exist, although the ones proven thus far are generally rather mundane compared to UFOs, Reptilians, Builderbergs, Human Genocide, etc... etc. However, the real potential for abuse is to couple conspiracy oriented mindsets with ignorance, and I'll give an example below. I think the vast majority of the people here are fairly rational, and despite delving into the unknown or poorly understood for entertainment, know when to draw the line. There's quite a few people, though, who are blindly ignorant, anti-intellectual, and are so wrapped up in paranoid delusions that they can be a real detriment to society. This is dangerous, especially since the wider public have an extremely poor understanding of science, history, politics, etc. They react verbosely, sometimes violently, to their own misconceptions regardless of whether what they're railing against is actually reflected in reality. This only serves to further confuse and obfuscate the general public.



Listen to the above video. Personally, I am thoroughly convinced that the person recording and the girl are just trolling judging by the amount of memes and tone of the other videos on her channel. Yet, listen to the crowd. They don't denounce her, they applaud her as she screeches to "Burn the Books", in regards to collage texts.

History has proven that my signature in regards to this is true. Most would not take it that extra step - but they will happily push others to that edge, and shirk back themselves at the horror of what transpires - yet never stand up and help put a stop to it. Encouragement of the act by silence or fear.

This... this is why it's dangerous to jump at ill-informed speculation, even if in the apparent safety and novelty of a conspiracy website.

[edit on 13-4-2009 by Lasheic]